Because life is made up of the small things.

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Amy turned six months recently, and while I particularly don’t like — entirely for personal and illogical reasons — the number six, I recognize how big a milestone this is for my daughter, my wife and myself. There are bound to be other, more significant milestones ahead, I know, but one at a time, if you please, thank you.

So indulge me, if you will, my least avid fan, as I list down the six things my daughter taught me, in no particular order:

Patience

I’m sure there are a myriad of ways people develop and learn patience, but there are few things that put patience to a test that are like trying to calm a fussy baby. You can’t talk to her, reason with her, plead with her, or even coerce her to stop. You wait, find — more like stumble upon — a solution, and when she acts up again, discover that your earlier method does not work anymore, and you go through the cycle all over again. Rinse, repeat.

Perseverance

Related, but not exactly the same. But you will discover what you truly are capable of, physically, emotionally and mentally, when you go to work with hardly a wink because baby was up all night. You have to carry her, and while babies don’t weigh very much at first, your muscles will be screaming thirty, forty minutes later or later, however long it takes to be able to put that little bundle of joy down without her waking up and having you carry her for another thirty, forty minutes. You change diapers, clean up messes, wash clothes, and do other chores, especially if you haven’t managed to get a yaya yet, which we also experienced first-hand. Kung nabibili lang talaga ang tulog.

Understanding

Like I said, babies cannot be reasoned or pleaded with nor coerced — what exactly do you do with that? More often than not I realize that I’ve been expecting my child to act like an older kid, at least, when really, crying and smiling are basically the only ways she knows how to express herself. Right now we’ve gotten to laughing, but the jist of it is that her needs are still the same basic, primal needs she had when she was born.

Acceptance

Especially before your child is born, before you even know if it’s a he or a she — a lot of things go through your mind. Normal? Healthy? Boy? Girl? So many variables up in the air, so many possibilities, and so many things could go wrong. There was no choice but for me to come to grips with the fact that while there were a lot of things I could do help my wife take care of our unborn child, there were a lot more things that were out of my/our hands.

Even after Amy was born healthy, and while my wife’s delivery, while naturally stressful with a few kinks and scares in-between, was largely uneventful, I still realized that so much was still unknown, so much was still out of my hands.

Love

I think there is nothing in the world like the love a parent feels for his or her child. Sure, the world romanticizes it all the same, but it’s a kind of feeling no one but parents can relate to, I think, a profound and deep love no words can properly or fully describe.

But not only did having my daughter teach me to love her, but it taught me to love her mother more as well. To see the sacrifice (and pain!) mothers have to go through to bring a child into the world, and the herculean effort they put into child rearing, how can I not love my wife more?

Faith and Grace

Technically these are two things, but I’ll weasel my way out of this by simply saying that they are two peas in a pod, so to speak.

We didn’t really enjoy the New Year’s holiday very much. Amy caught a really bad cold, and one night she just wouldn’t stop crying. We tried EVERYTHING. Two hours she cried incessantly, vomiting several times. We decided to rush her to the hospital. All the while, we were silently praying that everything would be OK. A few minutes into the car ride, Amy quieted down and finally agreed to be fed. When we got to the ER, she woke up, and seemed fine. The pediatrician took a look at her and said that we had nothing to worry about – Amy was just severely congested and we could go home. No medicine needed.

Faith isn’t about instant gratification. It’s not even trusting that everything will be okay. It’s simply the knowledge that a greater power holds everything in His hands, and allowing yourself to be led to wherever you’re meant to go. And grace is when everything works out, when the peace settles into you and you realize that things could just as well have gotten worse for whatever reason — but they didn’t.

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It’s not that I didn’t know how to do or feel all these things before Amy came along — it’s just that having a child puts things into perspective and introduces an entirely new dimension to these things. Children are life-changing, but you only realize the enormity of it once it happens. And while other people may have different feelings on having children, I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

I’m still in the process of repopulating the blog and putting back as much of the old posts as I can salvage, but I hope to get into the regular swing of things as far as this blog is concerned, sometime in the next couple of weeks. I’ve a lot of new stuff to put up including travelogues from Singapore, Baguio and Coron.

In the meantime, here’s something from the 2011 Philippine International Hot Air Balloon Festival.

I realize that I haven’t posted anything new for some time now – since the holidays are coming up, things have gotten a bit hectic. I was initially planning to post some pictures from a wedding I covered this month, but the post processing is taking too long, so here are instead some images from the recent Darren Criss – from the second season of Glee, to those who don’t know him – visit to Manila. Hope this can tide things over for awhile.

I used to do long exposure night photography in college, armed with a borrowed tripod and my trusty Minolta SLR. It’s been more than a year since I was blessed with the opportunity to own a DSLR of my own, but I only got around to shooting nightscapes again recently. A big shoutout is due to Raymond Cruz, Mike Mijares, Dave Villaruel and Jaime Alberto, who were with me during the shoot.

This was, literally, my only shot of the night. It was raining like crazy and we only had a short window of time before it started drizzling again. There were also some annoying security guards who accosted us at the Magallanes flyover – where this was taken. Apparently, it’s prohibited to take photographs in the area, but not for vagrants to spend the night there (which is potentially dangerous for themselves and others, but nevermind them, right? *end of rant*).

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In other news, I’m one of the finalists for the photoblog category of the Philippine Blog Awards! I’m not really expecting to win, but I still consider this a great honor to be included in the list. Thank you, thank you, Lord.